Dry and Separation Toilets

www.eautarcie.org
of Gunter Pauli

Reflections on the Gunter Pauli article Dry and Separation Toilets 1

By Joseph Orszgh
(adapted and translated by Andr Leguerrier)

Toilets in developing countries

The problem of toilets in developing countries must be addressed differently from those in
industrialized countries. In developing countries, outside of urban centres where the problems are
the most serious, the biolitter toilet (BLT)2 is a very inexpensive solution3, accessible to all. Plus, its
management fits in well alongside rural and urban agriculture (i.e. small city gardens) by providing
valuable compost. By eliminating the production of sewage in urban and periurban areas, its use
contributes effectively to public health and acts as an environmental safeguard, especially if there
are no sewers. In these countries, carbon-based litter can include shredded cardboard packaging
diverted from landfills, or other cellulosic plant-based material. Given that the BLT is installed within
the home, many security issues vanish, especially for women who would otherwise use communal
latrines. Placing a commercial source-separating dry toilet in a small home poses a problem,
especially for a large family, not to mention its much higher cost than a do-it-yourself BLT. In Haiti,
Joseph Jenkins BLT 4 (called a Humanure Toilet ) works well and is appreciated by the
population.

Scandinavian toilets

Source-separating dry toilets were developed and refined in the Nordic countries to meet todays
water management needs and paradigms (questionable as they may be). Source-separating
toilets are presented as the best solution to manage human waste.

Listening to a Danish specialist, I learned that the idea of separating faeces and urine was based
on the fact that animals dont defecate and urinate in necessarily the same place in nature. In
our opinion, separation stems rather from the will to space out the emptying of the dry toilet.
Indeed, about 90% of the mass of our excreta is liquid, and thus easy to collect and store in a
container. The remaining 10% of solids are much easier to manage, for example by drying.

The basic guiding principles used by the designers of these toilets are as follows:

The need to protect the user from bacterial and viral contamination,
The desire to remove human waste from sight and smell,
The need to use as little water as possible.

1 Link: http://www.theblueeconomy.org/uploads/7/1/4/9/71490689/case_19_dry_and_separation_toilets%C2%A0.pdf.
2 Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUTaiFItH58
3 Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbo7ZXZozWc
4 Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k86rzVGqfEg&feature=youtu.be

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Technically, the aim is to create a toilet that is just as convenient as a flush toilet, with little water
consumption and no sewage to be treated. Protection of the environment does not seem to be a
guiding principle for the toilets designers. Indeed, saving water is considered an environmentally-
friendly act!

The solutions and intricacies put forth to meet these requirements are only interesting from a
technical point of view.

The importance given to protection against bacterial and viral contamination reflects the
dominant present-day attitude, which has its roots in the 19th centurys hygienics concept. For
various reasons too long to explain here, we do not share in this view. Many clinical observations
have shown that disease can occur even without notable external pathogens, insomuch as the
bodys diathesis (i.e. the immune systems inherent predisposition) is favourable to the onset of
disease. Conversely, when the diathesis is unfavourable to disease, contamination with pathogenic
microorganisms may have no effect on ones health.

Sanitary risks are a natural phenomenon

One can observe the anthropocentric nature of issues such as sanitary risks and hazards from viral
or bacterial infection. Man is isolated from his environment because he disregards the fact that he
is part of the biosphere, like are other living beings. His ultimate goal is to eliminate and kill bacteria
and viruses, because these have been declared mans Public Enemy N 1 . Strange behavior in
a world advocating biodiversity. An alternate view we prefer is that microorganisms are an integral
part of the living world. Those that may have pathogenic properties are like predators in the wild,
just playing their regulatory role. Lest we forget that it is thanks to newly discovered bacteria that
we find more and more remediative solutions to oil pollution in soil?

Another observation concerns the fact that human waste is considered a dangerous matter to be
eliminated, thereby disregarding its integral role as part of Natures great cycles. In nature there is
no wastage. There are only stages of transformation throughout those natural cycles.

Environmental impacts of source-separating toilets

Technically, as soon as urine and faeces are separated, odours are inevitable. The designers of
these toilets solve the problem by integrating various ventilation techniques. Yet dejecta, whether
human or animal, cease to emit odours when combined with plant-based cellulosic materials.
Here, the presence of urine is essential because it creates the moist environment necessary to
biologically inhibit the enzymatic hydrolysis reactions responsible for odours. The combination of the
two types of biomass (plant-based and animal-based) stops the deconstruction process and
initiates a synthesis of amino acids having a high molecular weight, which will later come to form
humus in the soil. Users of the biolitter toilet (BLT)5 are familiar with the fact that urinating on plant-
based litter covering the faeces eliminates odours, as will a spray of water. There is no need to use
forced ventilation since the smell does not reappear. When placed in a home, the toilet simply
becomes a small piece of furniture.

At the Laggarberg School in Timr (Sweden), it is said that toilets transform faeces to make
compost . I also read in their beautiful flyers on source-separating toilets that dried faeces are

5 Link: http://www.eautarcie.org/images/blt-text-en.pdf

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simply called compost - which goes against current knowledge about paedogenesis. Also, urine
is used to fertilize a golf course, after having been diluted with 10 parts of water.

These assertions call for comment. First, when urine is stored, the ever-present enzyme called urease
hydrolyzes urines main component, urea [or carbamide (NH 2)2CO] to form carbon dioxide CO2
and ammonia HN3. In the presence of air, ammonia is oxidized into nitrous oxide ions NO2- (quite
toxic), which in turn are oxidized into nitrate ions NO 3-. Thus is formed a more or less concentrated
solution of ammonium nitrate NH4NO3, a chemical fertilizer identical to that obtained by chemical
synthesis. This explains the fertilizing power of diluted urine. Urine behaves in the soil just like a
chemical fertilizer, which uses up the carbon content in the humic substances by breaking these
down. (The carbon that was present in the urea has already dissipated into CO 2 gas while urine
was being stored.) The result is a burning of soils humus, which slowly dies. From then on, the soil
can only be productive with the help of chemical fertilization infusions .

Now lets examine the other objective, saving water. A man produces about 1.5 liters of urine per
day. Adding another 10 parts of water represents a total water consumption of 15 liters, about the
same order of magnitude as a low-flush toilet.

Lets also look at the nitrogen balance sheet for this type of toilet. Through his dejecta, a man
produces approximately 4 kg of nitrogen. Considering that European standards allow for the
application of 200 kg of nitrogen per hectare per year on farmland, one man needs to have a 200
m parcel of land at his disposal for spreading his dejecta in his garden so as not to exceed those
standards. For a family of 4, this means 800 m. If there is insufficient land for the purpose, standards
will be exceeded, leading to pollution of ground waters from nitrates. In reality, spreading diluted
urine on the ground has exactly the same environmental impact as that of liquid pig manure. Both
techniques are destructive and polluting for soil and ground waters.

Here you see that source-separating dry toilets share the same logic as that of chemical
agriculture, which considers the mineral soil as a non-living substrate, in which you need only
introduce in whatever form N-P-K nutrients to obtain a harvest. This disregards soil life that can
only exist thanks to the molecular structures that constitute stabilized organic matter. In reality,
good living topsoil is the starting point of all life on the continents. It is an environment that
harbours an extraordinary diversity of living beings that live in symbiosis with plant roots. Chemical
fertilizers eliminate this living world and produce diseased plants that nature tries, in turn, to
eliminate by mobilizing pests and diseases. Thus emerges the need for pesticides. Their use can only
lead to the destruction of the last traces of life in soil.

It is not enough to introduce organic matter into the soil to form humus. A series of conditions need
to be met. A prerequisite is combining plant-based biomass carbon-rich and animal-based
biomass (dejecta) nitrogen-rich to form a mixture which is the starting point for the formation of
living soil. This mixture, like in nature, must come in contact as soon as possible with the soil and the
organisms that live there. Composting of only faeces, in enclosed containers, does not meet these
conditions. Windrow composting of dejecta and fermentable organic matter is a somewhat
efficient imitation of nature. The most economical and efficient way to form humus for the soil is
ground-surface composting6, a sort of imitation of the processes taking place in forest soils. Dejecta
(urine + faeces) are combined with enough plant-based material to adjust the carbon/nitrogen
ratio (C/N) to a value of about 60. This mixture is then spread on the ground in a layer of about ten
centimetres thick. It is then covered again with cellulose-rich material (straw, culled plants,

6 Link: http://www.eautarcie.org/en/05f.html#c

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shredded cardboard, leaves, etc..). And let nature take its course. After one year, the spread
materials will have been absorbed by the ground, digested by the myriads of soil
microorganisms, which act quickly. Using this basic method, one obtains a rich, fertile, living soil,
even when starting from a completely sterile ground. This approach to regenerating degraded soils
is unthinkable today, due to hygienics-based arguments, even though there is no health risk. The
systematic prohibition of this approach has serious consequences on a global scale.

A good dry toilet also produces energy

Take note that this discussion is not about biogas production. Considering the poor state of todays
farmlands, biogas production is an environmental wastage. In addition, biogas production has a
very low efficiency, while also mineralizing (thus destroying) a lot of the organic matter.

The alternative we propose is to recover the heat energy released by a special windrow
composting technique called thermogenic composting, to heat homes and greenhouses. This is
presently an experimental technique which yet needs to be refined. During composting, part of the
organic matter is burned (i.e. a biological combustion) to produce energy, but this
combustion , like everything in nature, is highly efficient, generating low temperatures of about
60C. This temperature is not only sufficient to kill off faecal-contaminated bacteria, but also helps
to break down drug residues contained in human waste. By means of a heat exchanger located in
the heart of the heap, one can produce hot water for months, at a temperature between 28 and
35C, which is ideal for underfloor heating. First experiments have shown that to maintain heat
production beyond six weeks, one must intervene (adjust the moisture content, supply air) to boost
fermentation.

Green Energys True Performance

It is a well known fact that the energy efficiency of heating decreases strongly with the
temperature at which energy is produced. In a boiler, furnace or fireplace where plant-based
materials are burned, the temperature is of the order of 1000C, while the use of energy is at a
temperature of 50 to 60 C (in the radiator). The temperature difference between energy
production and energy use is large. Any thermodynamics expert knows that this involves significant
energy degradation, with heavy losses. In an underfloor heating system using thermogenic
composting, energy production is 60 C and energy use is 30 C. The temperature difference
between production and use is lower and the yield is much higher. Very little organic matter is
burned for a given amount of thermal energy actually used. Insofar as one technically controls
the management of the fermentation process, recovery of heat from the composting process is
likely the most efficient and rational energy recovery technique from biomass. Compared to high-
temperature combustion, it takes up very little matter and produces little CO2 with respect to the
unit amount of energy used. But the main advantage is that the final by-product of this energy
production technique is not ashes (= potassium fertilizer, destructive of soil), but a highly valuable
organic amendment for agriculture.

This is why we forewarn: large-scale combustion of plant biomass for purposes of energy production
is an environmental wastage. Our farmlands are definitively dying and disappearing by erosion,
due to lack of humus. Under these conditions, burning plant-based materials (= potential humus
when combined with dejecta) directly or as biogas, biofuels or pellets is a grievous attack on the
biosphere. The value of the energy so-produced is only a small fraction of the biomass destroyed.

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These considerations are absent from the source-separating dry toilet discourse.

Source-separating toilets in an ECOSAN perspective

When one abandons todays paradigms, one renews with a system that integrates human
activities within the biosphere. The prime goal is no longer to hide away our dejecta, nor is it to save
water, but rather to recycle these in the most efficient manner towards the formation of humus in
the soil and a return of its biodiversity, while also saving water.

In the Nordic countries, source-separating toilets are widely used, especially in rural areas. Their use
is therefore limited to homes with a garden (or backyard as the garden is called in North
America). By adopting EAUTARCIEs version of ECOSAN, the inhabitants of these areas will have the
choice between the use of a dry toilet and a low-flush toilet discharging its waste into a septic tank
reserved for black water, which needs to be periodically emptied. The question is whether, in this
new context, it is still reasonable to use a source-separating toilet? When you have a small garden,
composting the BLTs effluent, be it by traditional bin and windrow composting or alternate ground
surface composting, is the simplest, least expensive and most effective way to protect the
environment. The effluent can even be used to build a compost heap that will help heat the home.
Of course, the BLT requires more frequent emptying. To avoid this chore, users have the option
between a source-separating dry toilet and a low-flush toilet. In both cases, a holding tank is
required, on the one hand for the collection of urine and on the other, for the collection of
concentrated black water (usually in a septic tank). With a source-separating dry toilet, what is to
be made of the dried faeces? Must these again be composted with plant materials and a little
water (since urine has been removed)? As diluted urine is harmful to the soil if spread upon it, it
becomes necessary to empty the urine holding tank as you would the septic tank, and remove the
urine of one and the sewage of the other (by tank truck transport) to an impregnation and
composting centre for further treatment. When you now compare source-separating dry toilets
and low-flush-toilets with the BLT-type dry toilet, the choice becomes obvious. Consider the true
impact of each set-up on soil life, and the monetary cost of each.

Joseph Orszgh

Mons, January 7, 2013.

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